My
Father's Mother's Father's Mother's family
The narrative can be read in conjunction with the Page family tree. You can see
places significant to the Wiseman family on the site map of Ely.
This family story includes material from, and links with,
the stories of the Page, Cross and Carter families. My direct ancestors are highlighted
in bold the first time they appear in the
narrative.

The Waterside
district of Ely was, until well into the 20th Century,
one of the poorest areas of housing in Cambridgeshire.
Four of my sixteen great-great-grandparents lived and
died there, and many of their descendants were born in
the same small group of streets beside the river,
including my father. What brought William Wiseman,
a labourer from over the border in Mildenhall, Suffolk,
to the Waterside district we will never know, but on 4th
February 1841 he married Ely girl Elizabeth
Appleyard in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.
They were my great-great-great-grandparents. They both
gave their address as Ship Lane, off of Broad Street, in
the Waterside district. This was probably an address of
convenience, because the census of a month later finds
them living in Hatch's Cottage at Stuntney, just outside
the city but still in the Holy Trinity parish.

Elizabeth Appleyard
was from an Ely Waterside family of long standing,
related to the boatbuilding family of the same name. The
Appleyard boatyard still exists in Ely today. But it is
likely that Elizabeth was from a poorer branch of the
family, as her husband William is not shown on any census
as anything other than a labourer - indeed, by 1871 he is
described as an unemployed labourer.

Elizabeth was six
months pregnant at the time of the marriage, and in April
she gave birth to a child. The couple called him John.
Sadly, the little boy lived for just two weeks, and
William and Elizabeth would have four more children who
would die in infancy. In the poverty of the Waterside,
this was not an unusal occurence, and soon after the
death of the child William and Elizabeth moved back into
the city slums, athough they would be recorded at various
addresses in the parish registers, including out in the
fen. Their seventh child, born in 1853 in the
unfortunately named Common Muckhill on the Waterside, was
my great-great-grandmother Alice Wiseman. William
and Elizabeth had eleven children altogether:

John WisemanBorn Stuntney, Cambridgeshire, in May
1841. He was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on
5th of May, but buried in the Holy Trinity
graveyard in the cathedral close on 12th May. At
the time of his birth and death, his parents were
living in Hatch's Cottage, Stuntney.

Abraham
William WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1842, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 5th of May,
exactly a year after his now-dead brother. A
labourer, he was still living unmarried at home
with his parents as late as the 1891 census, when
he was 49 years old. As his father was
unemployed, perhaps Abraham was the breadwinner
of the family. He died in the last quarter of
1901, after the death of his father, in the
Chesterton registration district, which included
much of south Cambridgeshire.

Thomas
WisemanBorn Quesney Fen near Ely,
Cambridgeshire, in 1844. He was baptised in Holy
Trinity parish on 28th July. Thomas was at home
with his parents in 1851, but his death was
recorded in the Chesterton registration district
in the first quarter of 1861.

Susan
Ann WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1846. She
was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 13th
September, when the family address was given as
Newnham Common, showing that they had moved back
into the city. Susan died at the age of five, and
was buried in the Holy Trinity graveyard in the
cathedral close on 12th October 1851.

Emma
WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1849, she
appears on the 1851 census at the age of two.
However, she was not baptised in Holy Trinity
parish until 11th October 1851, exactly nine
months after her younger brother. I can find no
reason to account for this, unless Emma died and
a child after Benjamin was also named Emma - but
if this is so, it is not reflected in the BMDs or
parish records. The 1861 census for Ely is lost,
and by 1871 Emma was most likely probably either
married or dead, although again no record for
either appears for her in the Holy Trinty PRs.
However, in 1911 an Emma Wiseman appears in
Reading as the Ely-born unmarried sister of the
Ely-born married Susan Youngs, who is the correct
age to be Emma's sister Susan. However, Emma's
age is given as 41 instead of the 61 it should
be. A mystery.

Benjamin
WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1851, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 11th February,
when his parents were recorded as 'of Bull Lane'.
Benjamin died at the age of eight, and was buried
in the Holy Trinity graveyard in the cathedral
close on 10th February 1859.

Susannah
WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1855, and
privately baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 20th
October, when her parents were back in Bull Lane.
She was buried just four days later, when her age
was recorded as 'one week'.

Susan
Ann WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1857, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 6th December,
when the family were living in Bull Lane. In 1871
she was a live-in servant at the Fountain public
House on Silver Street. Susan married Frederick
Youngs, probably in the 1890s, and she may have
been a widow at the time. In 1911 they were
living in Reading, Berkshire, and a sister, who
may be Susan's sister Emma, was living with them.

Benjamin
WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1859, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 9th October,
when the family were still living at Bull Lane.
Benjamin was given the same name as his brother
who died earlier the same year. At home with his
parents in 1871, he was living in London in 1881
as an engine fitter, and soon after this went to
live in Canada, where he married a London-born
girl called Millicent Howes. They lived in
Waterloo, Ontario and had six children, some of
whom lived into the last years of the 20th
Century. There are many Wisemans in Ontario today
who are their descendants.

There
is then a gap of eight years until

James
WisemanBorn Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1867, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on on 7th April,
when the family were still living at Bull Lane.
James was still living at home in 1891 when he is
shown as a boiler maker, but by 1911 was a 44
year old farmworker lodging in the household of
the inn-keeper Richard Gibson at Little Downham.
He died in Ely in 1929. There must be a
possibility that James was actually his 'sister'
Emma's child, registered as belonging to her
parents.

Alice Wiseman, my
great-great-grandmother, was baptised in the Lady Chapel
of Ely Cathedral on 22nd October 1853. The 1861 census
for Ely is lost, but in 1871 she was still living with
her parents in Victoria Street, which runs between Broad
Street and the River Ouse. Just around the corner in
Broad Street, a 22 year old man was living in lodgings.
His name was Henry Page, and he wasmy great-great-grandfather. On the 5th July
1873, Henry Page and Alice Wiseman were married in the
Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.

Henry Page was a
stone dresser from Great Shelford in the outskirts of
Cambridge. His work must have been in demand in the 1870s
when Cambridge, and its colleges in particular, were
undergoing a building boom, and there were several
stoneyards in the town. Many colleges were adding new
stone buildings in the gothic style, but perhaps Henry's
work took him further afield, because It is likely that
it was the restoration project at Ely Cathedral which had
brought Henry to Ely. In fact, Henry had still been
living in Shelford at the time of the 1871 census, but
Alice was pregnant at the time of their marriage. After
their marriage, Henry and Alice moved into a house in
Broad Street, the main road through the Waterside, where
their first child, also called Henry, was born in January
1874. The family would remain in this part of Ely for the
rest of their lives. Several of Alice's
great-grandchildren, including my father, would be born
in the Waterside. Even today, it is possible to find
Henry and Alice's descendants living in this small group
of streets beside the river.

The following year,
Henry and Alice and thier infant son had moved around the
corner to Annesdale, which runs at the other end of
Victoria Street to Broad Street, for the birth of their
second son William, and on 31st March 1879 their third
son, my great-grandfather Arthur Page, was born in the Annesdale
house. Henry and Alice would have thirteen children in
all. They were still living in Annesdale at the time of
the 1881 census. Henry was no longer a stone dresser,
declaring his occupation as an agricultural labourer. The
restoration of the cathedral was complete, and there was
little other work for a stone dresser in the Isle of Ely.
Henry and Alice and their family were back on Broad
Street by the census of 1891, and their address makes it
clear that they were living next door to the Cutter Tap
public house. After 1891, the family moved to Newnham
Street, possibly then to Ship Lane, and then to Willow
Walk, where the last Page child, Ellen, would be born in
1899. All these streets are very close together.

A few weeks after
the 1891 census, Henry's father Robert died in Great
Shelford. His mother Eliza died there three years later.
Alice's father William died at home in Back Hill, Ely in
1896. After a funeral service in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral, he was buried on 17th October in Ely Cemetery
in plot D601. Alice's mother Elizabeth, formerly of the
poorer strand of the Appleyard family, survived her
husband. Most curiously, she is to be found on the 1901
census at the age of eighty living as a boarder in
Fulham, west London. I cannot account for this, but it
seems to be her. There do not appear to be any of her
relatives in the same house. She died there in 1906, aged
eighty-three.

These are the
thirteen children of Henry and Alice Page:

L-R: five of Henry and
Alice Page's sons: Robert, Arthur, Herbert and Thomas
with Henry (first two on left)

Henry PageBorn Broad Street, Ely in January 1874.
He was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 4th February. In 1901, Henry is
shown as a railway labourer, and in 1911 as a
labourer in the jam factory. He lived at several
different addresses in the Waterside area in the
years after the 1891 census. He was still
unmarried in 1911. On Boxing Day 1916, Henry was
a witness at his brother Thomas's marriage to
Emily Price in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.
Henry died at the age of 62, and was buried in
Ely cemetery on 3rd November 1936, in plot G140.

William
Robert PageBorn Annesdale, Ely on the 26th May
1875. He was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 20th June. William left home fairly
early, because at the age of 14 he is a
bricklayer's apprentice lodging in a house on St
Mary's Street, Ely. William was a witness at the
marriage of his sister Emma to Arthur Moate in
the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral in September
1897. William himself married Margaret Annie
Melton in the parish church at Swaffham in
Norfolk on 4th August 1900. In 1901 and 1911 they
were living at addresses in the Waterside
district of Ely. By 1911 they had no children.
William was a bricklayer. He died in Ely in the
second quarter of 1957 at the age of 83.

Emma
PageBorn Annesdale, Ely on the 19th July
1877. She was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 19th August. Emma was a visitor to
the household of Frank and Ruth Catchpole in
Springhead Lane on the night of the 1891 census.
She was 14 years old, and was probably helping
look after the Catchpole children, both under 2
years old. Emma married Arthur Moate, a
horsekeeper, on the 4th September 1897 in the
Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Her brother William
was one of the witnesses. She was 20 years old,
and her address was given as Ship Lane. By 1901
they lived at Manea near Ely. By the time of the
1911 census, when she was 34, she'd had ten
children, eight of whom were still alive. The
eldest of them, Dora, married James Cross and
they lived next door to my father in Willow Walk,
Ely when he was a child. He remembers playing
with Dora's children Hilda and Elsie, who were
slightly older than him. In the photograph of the street party
held to celebrate the coronation of George VI in 1937,
my father, aged two, is sitting on Hilda Cross's
lap. Emma died in the Isle of Ely in 1958.

Arthur
Page
Born Annesdale, Ely on the 31st March 1879. My
great-grandfather. See below.

John
Page
Born Annesdale, Ely on the 24th February 1881. He
was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral
on 20th March. John was born five weeks before
the 1891 census. On the 2nd January 1909, at the
age of 27, he married a widow, Lillian May Kidd,
in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, and
inherited two stepsons. His brother Arthur and
his sister Susannah were witnesses to the
marriage. In 1911, John was a farm labourer
living at Reed Street, Stretham, just outside of
Ely. John is mentioned on his brother Robert's
service record in a list of next-of-kin as serving
in the Suffolk Regiment, but I have yet to
find out more details. When Lilian was buried in
Ely cemetery in November 1950 the family were
living in New Barnes Avenue.

Herbert
PageBorn Annesdale, Ely on the 12th February
1883. He was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 14th March. Herbert seems to have
been the great character of the family. In July
1900, Herbert signed up as a Boy in the Reserve
of the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment,
when he claimed to be a month short of his 15th
birthday. In fact, he was 18. The reason may be
that he was just four feet eight and half inches
tall. His hair was brown, his eyes were grey, and
he had a mole above his right buttock. He claimed
to be a Wesleyan Methodist. However, in 1903 he
was punished for being drunk on duty, and there
would be six further charges of being either
drunk on duty or absent without leave over the
next four years. At the time of the 1901 census,
Herbert's occupation was given as errand boy.
When he officially reached the age of 21 in 1907
(in fact, he was 24) he re-enlisted with the
Suffolks. Now, he claimed to be a member of the
Church of England, and had a tattoo on each
forearm! He was assigned to the reserve of the
3rd Batallion of the Suffolk Regiment.

Herbert
married Eliza Woodbine in the 4th quarter of
1908, possibly at St Mary's in Ely. They moved
into a house in Back Lane. Their first child was
called Herbert after his father. He was born in
Back Lane, Ely on the 12th December 1908, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish on the 20th
January 1909, probably in St Peters. Their next
child, Charles Henry, was born in Back Lane on
29th May 1910, and baptised in St Peter's on 22nd
June. During the course of the next year, the
growing family moved to a house in Harlocks Lane.
Their third son Harry was born in Harlocks Lane
on 14th June 1912, and baptised at St Peter's on
6th July. Their first daughter Alice was born in
Harlocks Lane on the 5th May 1914, and baptised
at St Peter's on 27th May. Herbert had been
discharged from the army reserve with a good
character in January 1914, but he re-enlisted
with the Suffolks as soon as the Great War broke
out. A keen musician, he was a drummer boy in the
2nd Battalion (12th foot) of the Suffolk
Regiment, and he was wounded in October 1914 at
the First Battle of Ypres.

He
returned to England where he would spend the next
six months joining the Battalion band. By early
1916, Eliza was pregnant again, but Herbert was
called back to duty in France. I have heard a
story from several sources that, the night before
embarking, Herbert did the rounds of the pubs of
the Waterside, drumming out a tattoo on the
tables to say goodbye to his friends. It was the
last time they would see him. Returning to
Flanders, he was killed on the 2nd of March 1916
at St Eloi, on the Ypres Salient in Flanders,
while engaged in bomb-throwing duty. He was 33
years old. He is remembered on the Menin Gate
Memorial in Ypres. On the 1st September 1916,
almost exactly six months after his death,
Herbert and Eliza's daughter was born in
Springhead Lane, Ely, home of the Woodbine
family. Her name was St Eloi Souvenir Felixstowe,
a grandiloquent name for a child of the
Waterside, but a perpetual memory of her father's
final resting place, and perhaps a clue to his
residence while recovering from injury the
previous year - did Herbert and Eliza spend time
on the Suffolk Coast? St Eloi was baptised in
Holy Trinity parish on the 20th September 1916,
two months to the day after Herbert's brother
Arthur had been killed in the Battle of the
Somme.

Robert
PageBorn Annesdale, Ely on the 19th June
1884. He was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 30th July. By the age of 16, Robert
was a servant living in the house of Charles
Bent, a shoemaker, on the Green at Manea, near to
his sister Emma and her husband. He signed up to
the Suffolk Regiment on April 8th 1902 when he
was 18 years old. He was five feet four inches
tall, his eyes were blue and his hair was brown.
He claimed to be a member of the Church of
England, but on 6th September 1906 his record was
amended because he had become a Wesleyan
Methodist (his brother Herbert made a move in the
opposite direction). In 1905 he extended his
service, joining the 2nd Battalion of the Suffolk
Regiment, and becoming a Corporal. He would
remain in the army, either as a reservist or an
active soldier, until 1920, thus fighting
throughout the whole of the First World War.

Robert was discharged from the army
in 1910 after eight years service. He was living
with his wife Frances in Annesdale, Ely, for the
birth of their son Edwin Robert on 27th August
1910. Edwin was baptised in Holy Trinity parish
at St Peter's church on 21st September. However,
by the time of the census in April of the
following year, Robert, Frances and Edwin had
moved to Norton, Suffolk, where they had been
mairred two years previously. Robert was employed
as a swine herdsman. Edwin is too young to be
Robert's child with Harriet Rose, but
intriguingly Robert and Frances declared on the
census form that they'd had another child who
died. Meanwhile, at the same census, Harriet Rose
was working as a cook on a farm at Rougham, near
Bury St Edmunds. There was no child with her.

Robert re-enlisted with the Suffolk
Reserve in 1914, and was shortly after
transferred to the Northamptonshire Regiment. He
was wounded in 1916 and invalided out in 1917
when his discharge papers noted he was fit to
work. He joined the Labour Corps after the War in
1919, being finally discharged as surplus to
military requirements in March 1920, when he
returned to Long Melford in Suffolk to live with
his wife and children Edwin, Arthur, Herbert and
Frank.

In about 1920, a photograph was taken
outside of Melford Hall of all the local men who
had fought in the War and survived it, and it is
likely that Robert is in this photograph. Robert
died in Sudbury in 1935 at the age of 51.

Susannah
PageBorn Ely 1886. Curiously, there is no
record of Susannah's baptism in the Holy Trinity
parish registers, but her birth was registered in
Ely in the third quarter of the year. Susannah
was shown as Susan on the 1891 and 1901 censuses.
She was a witness at her brother John's marriage
in Ely in January 1909. Susannah married Robert
Easey in the last quarter of 1910. In 1911, they
lived in a house on Back Hill with Susannah's
younger brother Charles and younger sister Ellen,
and this may very well have been the house of her
mother, who was in hospital on the night of the
census. Susannah's husband was a market gardener.
Susannah died in Bristol in 1971 at the age of
85.

Sarah
PageBorn Annesdale, Ely, on the 21st June
1888. She was baptised in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral on 1st August. Shortly after this, the
family moved to Broad Street. However, Sarah died
at the age of 15 months, and was buried, after a
service in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, in
plot cb1246 of Ely Cemetery on the 5th October
1889. In the Holy Trinity registers her address
is recorded as Broad Street, but the cemetery
records note that she died at Waterside.

Thomas
PageBorn Broad Street, Ely on the 2nd June
1890. Thomas was baptised in Holy Trinity parish,
probably at St Peter's church, along with his
brother Charles and sister Sarah on 5th October
1895. In 1907 he was fined 2/6 with 9/6 costs for
trespassing on the Great Eastern Railway and
causing a nuisance with his brother Charles and
two other boys. By 1911 he was a Private
territorial soldier in the 3rd Battalion of the
Suffolk Regiment, based at Bury St Edmunds. When
the Great War broke out, Thomas signed up on the
13th August 1914, nine days after war was
declared. However, he was discharged on the 25th
July 1915, the cause given as 'sickness' -
whatever it was, it was sufficient for Thomas not
to be recalled at the start of general
conscription in 1916, and he appears to have
spent the rest of the War in Ely. When his
brother Herbert was killed in 1916, the Cambridge
Independent Press reported that Herbert had three
brothers serving in the army, Arthur, Robert and
Charles. There was no mention of Thomas. Thomas
married Emily Ann Agnes Price in Ely in the Lady
Chapel of Ely Cathedral on Boxing Day 1916, three
months after the death of his brother Arthur in
the Battle of the Somme. The witnesses were his
sister Sarah Flack and his brother Henry. Before
and after the War Thomas worked for Ely Jam
Factory, and several photographs of him survive,
including one from 1912 and one from 1920 where
he looks just like his great-nephew, my father,
did at the same age. Thomas and Emily were living
at 35 New Barns Road, Ely at the time of the
burial of their still-born son in Ely on 5th
September 1931. When Emily died in 1949 they were
living in Littleport. Thomas died in the Ely
registration district in 1964.

Charles
Page
Born Broad Street or Newnham Street, Ely on the
15th January 1893. Charles was baptised in Holy
Trinity parish, probably at St Peter's church,
along with his brother Thomas and sister Sarah on
5th October 1895. In 1907 he was fined 2/6 with
12/6 costs for trespassing on the Great Eastern
Railway and causing a nuisance with his brother
Thomas and two other boys. Charles was a boat
cleaner working for a boatbuilder in 1911, and
living with his sisters Susannah and Ellen.
Charles was 21 when WWI broke out. He is
mentioned as serving with the Suffolk Regiment in
reports of his brother Herbert's death.

Sarah
PageBorn Newnham Street, Ely on the 27th
September 1895. She was given the same name as
her sister who died as a baby in 1889, and
baptised in Holy Trinity parish, probably at St
Peter's church, along with her brothers Thomas
and Charles on the 5th October 1895. In 1911,
Sarah appears to have been the 15 year old Sarah
Page living as a domestic servant at Pegg's Yard,
Cherryhinton in Cambridge. Unfortunately, the
person who filled in the form omitted her place
of birth. It would seem that she was lodging in
the house rather than working in it. On the 13th
October 1913 Sarah married Harry Flack, of the
Wheel public house in Broad Street, in the Lady
Chapel of Ely Cathedral. This was a week before
the death of Sarah's father Henry in the Ely
Workhouse. One of the witnesses was her brother
Arthur. The other was Daisy Rodgers, daughter of
the landlord of the Wheel - there is a turn of
the century photograph of the young Daisy
standing outside the pub in the book Ely Inns
by Patrick Ashton. On Boxing Day 1916, Sarah was
a witness at her brother Thomas's marriage to
Emily Price in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral.

Ellen
PageBorn Willow Walk, Ely on the 25th June
1899. Ellen was the last of the Page children.
She was baptised in Holy Trinity parish, probably
at St Peter's church, on 19th July. She is shown
as Helen on the 1901 census. By 1911, she is
living with her sister Susannah and brother
Charles on Back Hill. She may well be the Ellen
Page who married Fred Bradfield in the Chesterton
registation district in the 3rd quarter of 1918.

Arthur Page, my
great-grandfather, was born on the last day of March 1879
at the family home on Annesdale, beside the river. His
father Henry gave his occupation as a farm labourer.
Arthur was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on 27th April.
His father again gave his occupation as an agricultural
labourer at the time of the 1881 census, when Arthur was
two years old. At the age of twelve, Arthur was the
second of seven children at home on the night of the 1891
census in Broad Street, where the family had moved after
June 1888. By 1895, the family had moved again, to
Newnham Street. They had completed their journey to the
northern end of the Waterside by 1899, when they were
living on Willow Walk, later to be the road where
Arthur's grandson, my father, was born.

On the 12th January
1901, a few days before a remarkable period in English
history drew to a close with the death of Queen Victoria,
Arthur Page married my great-grandmother Sophia Cross in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral. Sophia's surname was probably the most common
of all surnames in the poor Ely Waterside area. She was
born on Broad Street on 9th January 1882, the eldest of
nine children and the daughter of a railway worker. Her
mother was Sarah Carter from
Prickwillow, just outside of Ely, but her father Thomas
Cross was from a Waterside family of long
standing. A few weeks later, at the time of the 1901
census, Arthur and Sophia were living in Bull Lane, today
called Lisle Lane, off of Waterside. The 22 year old
Arthur gave his occupation as a baker's labourer. Sophia
was already pregnant with their first child, who would be
a boy, and was born on 22 November 1901. He was named
Arthur Thomas Harry after his father and his two
grandfathers. A few hundred yards off in Broad Street,
Arthur's mother Alice was living with seven of her
children, but her husband Henry was not with her. In
March 1901 he had been sent to prison for six months for
cruelty to Alice and the children. However, although they
had apparently been living apart for a long time, Henry's
wife Alice's relationship to the head of the household
was described as Wife rather than as Head on
the 1901 census.

Soon after their
son Arthur's birth, Arthur and Sophia themselves moved to
Broad Street, where their eldest daughter Violet Eleanor
was born on 6th August 1904. Soon after Violet's birth,
Arthur got a job as a railway porter with the Great
Eastern Railway, and the family moved some 20 miles to 7
Goodyers Yard, Narrow Street, Peterborough, where their
third child Beatrice Sophia was born on the 30th January
1906. Arthur and Sophia were back in Ely and living on
Back Hill for the birth of Florence May on 28th May 1907.
It was recorded that Arthur was still a labourer for the
Great Eastern Railway. In January 1909 Arthur was a
witness at his brother John's marriage to Lilian Kidd in
the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Arthur and Sophia's
second son, Percy, was born in Back Hill on 10th May
1909. By the time of the census in April 1911, Arthur was
a general labourer working for the Co-op.

It is difficult to
trace what happened to Arthur's father Henry during these
years. In 1908, Arthur's brother Herbert gave both their
parents names as his as next-of-kin on his army
attestation papers. But Henry and Alice were recorded as
living at separate addresses. Henry was lodging at the
Queen's Head, Waterside, Ely, while Alice was living at
Back Hill, Ely. Arthur and his wife Sophia were also now
living on Back Hill.

By the time of the
1911 census, Arthur and Sophia had five children in the
Back Hill house, but Arthur's mother Alice was not there.
She was ill with stomach cancer in Addenbrooke's Hospital
in Cambridge. Arthur's father Henry was also not in Back
Hill, but at least he reappeared on the 1911 census, and
he was close to home, living in the Ely Workhouse. A few
months after the 1911 census, Arthur and Sophia had a
sixth child, Dorothy Louisa, known as 'Doll', who was
born in Back Hill on 26th August.

Then, on the 4th
March 1912, Arthur's mother Alice died of cancer at the
Back Hill house. She was notified as the wife of
Henry Page, labourer. Alice was buried in Ely
cemetery on 7th March, in plot F1138. A year later, on
26th April 1913, Arthur and Sophia's last child was born,
a girl, my grandmother Phyllis Alice Page. She was given her recently
deceased grandmother's name as a middle name. Arthur's
father, Phyllis's grandfather Henry Page, died of a
stroke six months later, on the 21st October, in the Ely
Workhouse. His occupation was given as general
labourer of Back Hill, although there is no evidence
that he ever lived there. He was buried in Ely cemetery
on 24th October, in plot F954.

These are the seven
children of Arthur and Sophia Page:

Four of Arthur and
Sophia's children in later life: Arthur, Violet (holding
a very young me!), Dorothy (with her husband Ken) and
Phyllis

Arthur
Thomas Harry Page, born in Bull Lane,
Ely on 22 November 1901. He was baptised in Holy
Trinity parish on 18th December, probably at St
Peter's church. His middle names were those of
his two grandfathers, Thomas Cross and Harry
Page. As the eldest child, Arthur must have been
aware of the death of his grandfather Harry Page
in the Ely workhouse in 1913, and he became the
man of the family when his father was killed in
the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, when he was
just fifteen years old. Arthur was living and
working in Yorkshire in the 1920s, and in the
second quarter of 1926 he married Ethel Gertrude
Elizabeth Payne in Wortley, to the north of
Sheffield. Ethel was pregnant at the time, and
their son Arthur Percival was born in
Peterborough on 24th September 1926. I'm not sure
how long they lived together as man and wife, or
if they stayed in Peterborough or returned to
Sheffield, but my grandfather Joe Knott met
Arthur in the early 1930s in Sheffield before
returning home with him to Ely, where he met
Arthur's sister who would become my grandmother,
so he certainly stayed in the area. It did not
become clear to Arthur's family for many years
that he was married and had a son. The boy,
Arthur Percival, married Dorothy Irenea Brooks in
Poplar, London in 1946. They had five children.
Arthur Percival died in 2003, Dorothy in 2010.

Arthur Page
was the one of my grandmother's siblings that I
knew best. In later life he lived in Ely. He
would often call around to my grandparents' house
while I was visiting, and I remember him as a
gentle, quiet man who always had time for me. My
father photographed him in the
early 1980s. He died in Ely in 1988.

Violet Eleanor Page
was born in Broad Street, Ely on 6th August 1904.
She was baptised in Holy Trinity parish on the
31st August, probably in St Peter's church. On a photograph taken in the 1920s she is
strikingly beautiful. She married Frederick
William 'Bill' Cooper in the Lady Chapel of Ely
cathedral on 30th November 1929. Violet's
brothers Arthur and Percy were the witnesses.
Violet and Bill lived at Stuntney. She was a
witness at my grandparents' marriage in August
1932, and was photographed holding me as a baby in 1962. I
remember her in later life as rather eccentric,
given to wearing what I thought of as unusual
hats. She died in Cambridge in 1978.

Beatrice Sophia Page,
known as Beatie, was born in Peterborough on 30th
January 1906. Her father's occupation was given
as a railway porter. She was given her mother's
Christian name as her middle name. Beatrice
appears to have given birth to an illegitimate
child called Ronald Page in the Holborn
registration district in London in 1925, when she
was nineteen. Presumably, she was in service. She
then married Frederick Pepper in Ely in 1928,
probably in the registry office. However, she
returned to London, and a second child, a girl,
was born at Wandsworth in south London in the 3rd
quarter of 1931. The baby was registered under
the surname Midwinter. The father appears to have
been one Wilfred Midwinter, and the maiden name
of the mother was given as Page, with no mention
that Beatrice's legal surname was actually
Pepper.

In the early 1930s, Frederick Pepper
was living in the Round House, Mepal, Cambs. And
then, on 11th July 1934, he died in hospital in
Chatteris, Cambs. In his will, proved on the 28th
August 1935, he left his entire estate to his
estranged wife, Beatrice Sophia Pepper, the value
being £200. In the fourth quarter of 1935,
Beatrice Pepper married Wilfred Midwinter in the
Mid Surrey registration district. Does this mean
that the news of her legal husband's death had
taken some time to reach Beatrice? Or was she
waiting for the will to be proved? A third child
followed, another girl, in the 4th quarter of
1939 in the Mid Surrey registration district, and
the mother's maiden name was now given
legitimately as Page. Curiously though, when the
fourth child, a third girl, was born in the Mid
Surrey district in 1941, Beatrice gave her maiden
name as Pepper. Is it possible that the registrar
had asked the wrong question, or, intriguingly,
that Beatrice wanted to hide her real name at
this stage? It is also intriguing that all three
of the girls were given the same middle name,
Violet, the name of Beatrice's older sister. Was
she remembering the terrible time after the death
of their father in the Battle of the Somme, and
paying tribute to the way that Violet looked
after the younger children? When Beatrice died in
the Sutton registration district in south London
in the 3rd quarter of 1973, her death was
registered correctly under the name Beatrice
Midwinter.

Florence May Page
was born in Back Hill, Ely on the 28th May 1907.
She was baptised on the 9th of June in Holy
Trinity parish, probably at St Peter's church,
when her father's occupation was shown as a
labourer on the Great Eastern Railway. She died
in Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge at the age of
17 in 1924.

Percy Page was born
in Back Hill, Ely on the 10th May 1909. He was
baptised in St Peter's church in Holy Trinity
parish on the 31st May. Percy was one of the two
witnesses at my grandparents' marriage in August
1932. He died in Silver Street, Ely at the age of
27 in 1937.

Dorothy Louisa Page,
known as Doll, was born in Back Hill, Ely, 26
August 1911. She married Kenneth Long in the Lady
Chapel of Ely Cathedral on the 8th June 1932, and
they lived in Stuntney.

Phyllis Alice Page,
born in Back Hill Ely on 26th April 1913. My
grandmother. See below.

In October 1913,
their father Arthur was a witness at his sister Sarah's
marriage to Harry Flack in the Lady Chapel of Ely
Cathedral. Soon after, Arthur, Sophia and their family
moved to a house on Waterside. But storm clouds were
gathering across Europe. Arthur Page was 35 years old
when the First World War broke out. He volunteered,
signing up as a Serjeant in the 2nd Battalion of the
Suffolk Regiment, and his medal record shows that he arrived in
France on the 26th January 1915.

The
2nd Battalion spent their first winter and spring bogged
down in the trenches of the Vierstraat area of Flanders,
before being returned to Billet at Westoutre on 11th
April. They spent the latter part of the spring building
the network of trenches in the Ypres salient,and then on
June 16th they were part of the force which attacked and
consolidated its hold in V Wood and Sanctuary Wood to the
east of Ypres. It seems that the Battalion came under
what were the first prolonged and sustained gas attacks
by the Germans on British troops. During July they
returned to billet in Ypres again, but spent the rest of
the summer consolidating the hold on the splendidly named
Spoil Bank and Bellyache Wood, again to the west of
Ypres.

In
general, the 2nd Suffolks seem to have spent an
uneventful 1915 in Flanders, with few casualties, except
for one major incident when, on September 8th, the
battalion sustained more than a hundred deaths trying to
capture a crater in Sanctuary Wood. Shortly after this,
Arthur's brother Herbert Page, who had signed up with him
but had previously been in the Reserve, was injured, and
returned to England. He rejoined the Battalion at the
start of 1916, when they were moved south towards St
Eloi. Shortly after arriving in the area, Herbert was
killed. Newspaper reports suggested that he died on the
way to hospital, but in fact it seems his body was never
recovered, and he has no known resting place. He is
remembered on the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres.

In
June 1916, Arthur Page and the 2nd Suffolks were removed
completely from the fighting and returned to depot at St
Omer for training in open warfare. They did not know it,
but the Generals were preparing for the Big Push,
designed to distract the Germans from their assault on
Verdun. It would be known as the Battle of the Somme. On
July 1st, the first day of the battle, the 2nd Suffolks
set out from St Omer for the Somme. They arrived at the
front on July 8th, and were placed in reserve, and then
on July 14th they were moved into the southern end of
Caterpillar Wood, to the east of Albert. Not far off, on
July 18th, the Germans attacked and, at great cost to
them, overran Delville Wood and part of the town of
Longueval. Two companies of the 2nd Suffolks were sent to
support the counter-attack, and among them was Serjeant
Arthur Page.

Shortly
before first light on what would be a warm, sunny day, at
3.35am on Thursday 20th July 20th, the Third Division of
the British Army attacked Delville Wood. Chris McCarthy,
in The Somme Day-by-Day, records that Early
in the morning the Division made an attack on Delville
Wood and village using 2nd Suffolks and 10th Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. At 3.35 am the Suffolks advanced from the
west, but the two leading companies were almost entirely
wiped out. The Fusiliers went astray, and came under fire
from a British machine-gun barrage, losing most of their
officers, only to press home a fruitless attack.

The
casualties in the 2nd Battalion were heavy, and among
those killed in the attack was Arthur Page. He was 37
years old. It seems to have been a spectacularly
foolhardy action: the two companies lost no less than ten
officers in the attack, one of them, a Major Congreve,
later being awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Arthur's
body was recovered, identified, and buried at Delville
Wood cemetery in Longueval.The Ely newspapers reported
the Page family's plight. On 28th July the Cambridgeshire
Times, which was incorporating the Ely Standard
for the duration of the War, reported that Yesterday
(Thursday) morning Mrs Page of Waterside, received a
letter from the Chaplain to the 2nd Suffolk Regiment,
informing her of the death in action of her husband,
Sergt A. Page. He leaves a wife and seven children, for
whom great sympathy is felt. On the same day, the Cambridge
Independent Press reported that Mrs Page,
Waterside, Ely, has received news that her husband Sergt
A. Page, of the 2nd Suffolks, has been killed in action.
The Chaplain of the Regiment has written a letter of
sympathy to the widow, who is left with seven children.

It is
said that when Sophia opened the letter from the Chaplain
telling her of her husband's death, she immediately lost
her hearing, and was deaf for the rest of her life. Every
street in the Waterside would have had members of the
Page and Cross families living in it, and the whole
district must have felt a reaction to Arthur's death.
Seventy years later, Arthur and Sophia's son Arthur, who
had been fifteen at the time, told me it was 'a terrible
time, just terrible'. My grandmother, who was three, and
who had in any case probably not seen her father for a
couple of years, was too young to know what was going on.
The oldest girl, thirteen year old Violet, looked after
her, and between them there formed a strong bond which
lasted for the rest of their lives.

As
1916 became 1917, there was more bad news for the Cross
and Page families. Sophia's brother Herbert Cross and the
5th Suffolks were moved north from the Suez Canal to
engage in what would become known as the First Battle of
Gaza in Palestine. Herbert was reported wounded on the
9th April, and on 18th October 1917 he died. He was
twenty-seven years old. He was buried in the British War
Cemetery in Gaza City, which is today in the Palestinian
State. Was it the injuries of
9th April that led to Herbert's death, or had he
recovered from them and returned to the battalion? It
seems that April's injuries were likely to blame, for
after the Second Battle of Gaza the Battalion spent time
at rest in an encampment by the sea, and then behind the
Gaza line providing working parties for filling sandbags.
During the third week of June, the Official History of
the Suffolk Regiment records, the battalion moved to
Samson's Ridge, the most prominent feature in that
Sector, and offering an extensive view of the country
beyond Gaza. Every afternoon the white houses of that
town caught the sun, making them look like fairy
dwellings to sand-weary eyes. The battalion was then
in training behind the lines until being issued with
helmets on 25th October for what would turn out to be the
Third Battle of Gaza, but Herbert had, of course, been
dead a week by then.

It was not possible to
repatriate the wounded from Palestine and Mesopotamia in
the same way as it was from northern France, so Herbert
may have spent all this time in a field hospital in Gaza.The death of Herbert seems
to have had a terrible effect on his mother Sarah, and
she died at home in Potters Lane just three months later
at the age of 57. She was
buried in Ely cemetery on 9th October 1917 in plot F1148.
Arthur and Herbert Page and Herbert Cross are all
remembered on the City of Ely war memorial, and Arthur
and Herbert Page's names were also proudly inscribed on
the Holy Trinity parish war memorial now reset in Ely
Cathedral, but Herbert Cross is not mentioned on this or
the Ely St Mary memorial.

In
1924, Phyllis's sister Florence died in Addenbrooke's
Hospital, Cambridge. She was just 17 years old. The
following year, Phyllis's sister Beatrice gave birth to
an illegitimate child in London, where she was presumably
in service. She returned to Ely with the child, where she
married Frederick Pepper in 1928, who may have been the
father. At about this time, the
eldest child Arthur left Ely looking for work in
Yorkshire. In 1926, he married Ethel Gertrude Elizabeth
Payne in Wortley, to the north of Sheffield. Ethel was
pregnant at the time, and their son Arthur Percival was
born in Peterborough on 24th September 1926. Arthur kept
this marriage and child a secret from the rest of the
family, and they did not find out about it until many
years later.

By the
end of the 1920s, Phyllis was living with her mother at
29a Fore Hill, a short distance from the Waterside house.
They lived behind a shop called Oxford House, and shared
a yard with the Clark family. Sophia and Phyllis both
worked as fruit factory hands. Beatrice appears to have
left Ely and Frederick Pepper behind, because in 1931 she
had a child with Wilfred Midwinter in Wandsworth, London.
After her estranged husband's early death, Beatrice
married Wilfred Midwinter in 1935. Two more Midwinter
children would follow.

In the early 1930s, Phyllis's
brother Arthur was still in Yorkshire, working on a
road-building scheme. There, he met the Kent-born Joe
Knott, and brought him back to Ely where he met Phyllis.
Joe went to work for British Sugar at Cantley in east
Norfolk, but he married Phyllis at Ely Register Office on
15th August 1932, when he was 24 and she was just 19. The
witnesses were Phyllis's brother Percy and her sister
Violet. Joe and Phyl went to live at 9, Council Cottages,
Cantley, and then in 1933 they moved to Ipswich, Joe
firstly living in lodgings in Tacket Street in the town
centre, before they both moved into rooms in Cavendish
Street, the same street that I would live in almost
exactly half a century later. They moved to 20 Fletcher
Road on the new Gainsborough Estate in Ipswich, where
their first child and only daughter was born.

They returned to Ely
in 1935, where they would remain. They lived in Willow
Walk off of Waterside, where Phyllis's grandmother Alice
Wiseman had been born almost eighty years earlier. My
father and his brothers were born in the house at 25
Willow Walk, but it has since been demolished. Some of
her siblings were nearby. Violet married Bill Cooper;
they lived at Stuntney, where he was a farmhand on Cole
Ambrose's farm, and later at Ribes Court in Ely. Violet
was the cook at the Bishop's Palace for many years, and
Phyllis worked around the corner at the Palace School.
Their sister Dorothy married Ken Long, and they also
lived nearby, first at Stuntney and then at Nornea. Their
elder brother Arthur eventually returned to settle in
Ely. Phyllis's brother Percy died at 31 Silver Street,
Ely in 1937; this house, almost opposite the Prince
Albert public house, has also since been demolished.

In 1937, a great
street party was held on Waterside to celebrate the
Coronation on George VI. The official photograph of the
occasion shows Sophia and Phyllis among the smiling
crowd, as well as two of Phyllis's children: her daughter
and her eldest son, my father, aged two. And then the
Second World War came. It must have been with some
trepidation that Phyllis waved goodbye to Joe, who went
to serve as a motorcycle dispatch rider in Italy. After
he returned at the end of the War, the family moved to a
new council house at 37 Chief's Street in 1947. Phyllis
and Joe lived in the house for the rest of their lives.
Several of their children married in the late 1950s, and
their first grandchild, a girl, was born in 1958. And
that year Phyllis's mother Sophia died, at the age of
seventy.

Phyllis is remembered
by my parents' generation for being ahead of her time.
Although she came from an extraordinarily poor
working-class background, one where few families had
aspirations, she was a great believer in education,
especially for girls. She ensured that all her own
children worked hard at school, all five of them winning
scholarships to grammar schools. She was very proud when
the first of her grandchildren went to university.

Phyllis Alice Knott
née Page died of a heart condition in Addenbrookes
Hospital, Cambridge, in 1990, a few weeks after she had
attended my wedding. She was seventy-seven years old.